EKELF, GUNNAR

born Sept. 15, 1907, Stockholm died March 16, 1968, Sigtuna, Swed. outstanding Swedish poet and essayist. Ekelf exerted great influence on his contemporaries. His radically modern style was influenced by such poets as Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, Ezra Pound, and T.S. Eliot. In such poetry from the 1930s as Sent p jorden (1932; Late on Earth), Ekelf was drawn to the Surrealist technique of automatism (the spontaneous release of the subconscious in the creative act), but his work also reflects an interest in musical forms and Oriental mysticism. A student of Oriental languages, Ekelf felt divided between mystical tendencies and rationalism. This conflict is apparent in Frjesng (1941; Ferry Song) and Non Serviam (1945; I Will Not Serve). Central to Ekelf's work is En Mlna-elegi (1960; A Mlna Elegy), published in several earlier versions from the mid-1940s. Its starting point is within the mind of the poet, sitting at Mlna dock on a summer day in 1940. Memories from his individual past intermingle with those of history in an endless panorama. In the 1950s Ekelf turned away from finished compositions to work in fragmentary forms, as in Strountes (1955; Nonsense). The last decade of his work is dominated by the Akritas trilogy, Diwan ver Fursten av Emgin (1965; Diwan over the Prince of Emgin), Sagan om Fatumeh (1966; The Tale of Fatumeh; Eng. trans., Selected Poems), and Vgvisare till underjorden (1967; Guide to the Underworld). The trilogy contains Ekelf's finest poetic expression of the simultaneous experience of presence and transitoriness. In 1958 Ekelf became a member of the Swedish Royal Academy.